@comrade_Comrade I looked up sacculina and read an article about what it is, and to sum it up it's basically a crab parasite that has all of its organs degenerated in adulthood except the reproductive organs, and it also creates trans crabs. Weird.
Still not as weird as the platypus. When Europeans discovered the platypus, they first thought that it was a joke and that someone strapped a duck beak to a rat. The platypus also lays eggs, but it's still considered a mammal.
One of the reasons why Australia and New Zealand got such strange animals compared to the rest of the world might be because their continent was the first to break away from Pangea. It was also more separated by sea to the rest of the earth landmass than the other continents were to each other. Which of course meant that they were very isolated and undisturbed and their flora and fauna evolved in a different way to suit their environment which gave them their unique ecosystem.
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@comrade_Comrade I looked up sacculina and read an article about what it is, and to sum it up it's basically a crab parasite that has all of its organs degenerated in adulthood except the reproductive organs, and it also creates trans crabs. Weird.
Still not as weird as the platypus. When Europeans discovered the platypus, they first thought that it was a joke and that someone strapped a duck beak to a rat. The platypus also lays eggs, but it's still considered a mammal.
One of the reasons why Australia and New Zealand got such strange animals compared to the rest of the world might be because their continent was the first to break away from Pangea. It was also more separated by sea to the rest of the earth landmass than the other continents were to each other. Which of course meant that they were very isolated and undisturbed and their flora and fauna evolved in a different way to suit their environment which gave them their unique ecosystem.